Lavender Fields and Empty Craters
by Jessie D
Summary: The story is about the time when Joe and Hanna meet for the first time and have to solve the mystery with the Germans bombing the empty countryside... what are they looking for? Set in England during the Second World War. Adventure/Romance/Humor.
1. At First Glance

Hanna Lance, Sebastian Lee, The general and Cartright are my own characters.

Joe Sullivan is not.

Hope you like it! Please Review.

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**Lavender Fields, Empty Craters and Love's Broad Grin**

She looked out of the car window and sighed. There was nothing more she loved more than lavender fields, except maybe archaeology. Hanna Lance was a professor at the Institute of Archaeology University College in London . She had been in the middle of a lecture when her secretary had given her a note telling her that the head of the university had assigned her to go to Norfolk Airbase after receiving a phone call form the base general. She was puzzled, why would the base general need any knowledge about archaeology, especially at wartime, was beyond her.

The driver turned his head in her direction:

"Norfolk Airbase, miss, will be on your left side," he motioned with his head and she saw the runway come into view. A plane was circling, waiting for permission to land.

In the plan above the navigator, know as Sebastian Lee, glanced to his left and saw the car heading for the base.

"Look, Joe! I didn't know they let civilians in. I thought this base didn't exist to the public," Sebastian said over the intercom.

"It doesn't. Whoever it is down there must be mighty important. Well, let's show them what we're made of!" Captain Joe Sullivan commented as he pulled the plane up into a loop. He was the pilot of the Tiger T-3A. He claimed that he knew the plane as the back of his hand, yet Sebastian had caught him a few times flicking through the plane manuals.

"Stop showing off, Joe. You know what the general thinks of it, he'll have your flying permit for this!"

"Relax. The general's only wishing he could do the same. Hang on, we're about to land."

The plane came into land as the car stopped by the side of the runway. When Hanna stepped out of the car and straightened, she saw that one of the pilots had climbed out of the cockpit and caught her breath. The man was tall, broad shouldered, with dark brown hair in wavy locks falling around his handsome face. She saw him draw breath and she could imagine how she must look standing there with the sun in her back, framing her golden locks like an aura. She was dressed in a pale blue dress suit and high healed shoes. Her long blond hair was in a smart bun at the back of her neck, leaving a few strands to frame her face. The effect must be stunning for he did not move as his friend, the navigator, tried to climb down the ladder from the cockpit. He look around him to see what his friend was staring at and as he saw Hanna, he threw out his arms in a surrendering gesture and jumped down to land steadily on his feet next to the his friend.

Hanna looked at the driver who was smiling sheepishly at her and took her bag from him. Her movement seemed to have broken the spell for now the pilot came striding over to her with a determined look in his eyes.

"Captain Joe Sullivan at your service," he said and saluted with a disarming smile.

"Wait a minute, Joe. She's just arrived," Sebastian said coming over to join them. "The name's Sebastian Lee." He too saluted and as she was about to reply, a man she assumed was the general strode out of a nearby building.

"Ah, Professor Lance. It's a pleasure to meet you and thank you for coming on such a short notice."

"Professor…. Brains and beauty, you really have it all don't you." Joe commented before he could stop himself and received an angry glance from the general.

"Now, now, leave the Professor alone. This way, if you please." He motioned to a building that was his office.

"Oh, and by the way, Captain Sullivan, nice loop. I wish I could have the freedom to do the same."

"HE knows something!" Sebastian whispered to Joe. "Could he have heard us?"

"Nah, the line was safe, I double checked it. We'll have to be careful."

"What? We're still going through with it, are we?"

"'Course we are. Now if you will excuse me, the general will be needing me," he said and at that moment he was called into the general's office.

"How do you do it?" Sebastian shouted after him.

"A gift, mate," Joe answered as he entered the office.

"What, Captain?" the general asked as he looked up from the desk where he was seated.

"My good looks, sir." He glanced at Hanna and winked at her. She rolled her eyes.

Ignoring Joe, the general turned to Hanna:

"Professor, you might be wondering why we need your help. It is simple. Yesterday, the Germans bombed the whole country. Nothing strange there, Hitler might be feeling optimistic, thinking he will defeat the entire country by one air raid. It was the bombing that was… well, unusual. They usually drop as many bombs they can before they're shot down, but this time each plane only dropped one bomb. In addition, it seemed as if they had distinct targets. Not all are inhabited; they even bombed fields and woods. There have been reports of bombings in the moors all over England. We sent some men to check the bombs that fell in the area of the air base. They reported that someone had been digging in the crater the bomb made when it detonated. Apparently they found what they were looking for, only the spades were left. We were intrigued by this, so we looked at other places where the bombs fell. The same scene, a hole, nothing in it, not even bomb splitter and some spades." He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "That is why we need your help."

Hanna sat silent, her eyes showing the chock she was feeling after this flow of information.

"Wow!" Joe commented and whistled. "That was…a mouthful to say the least."

"I- I don't know where to start. I think I would like to see the crater where they have been digging," she said and stood up.

"Cartright!" the general shouted and a tiny man in his thirties entered the office.

"Sir," the man said and saluted.

"Show the professor where she's staying and then take her to where the car is parked, we'll meet you there." The man saluted a second time and Hanna followed him out of the office.

"Now, Captain Sullivan you must be wondering why I need you."

"Sir."

"I need you to escort Professor Lance around the base and to the craters. You will fly her wherever she wants to go and help her when she needs it. No fooling around. This is as important as any other mission is; we really need to know why the Germans did this. Understood?"

"Yes, general. No fooling around, best foot forward."

Hanna stood waiting at the car that the general had ordered for her when Joe arrived.

"So, we're off to see this crater, eh?"

"Yes, I need to see how deep it is and the surrounding countryside. I might need to do some digging and I might need your help."

When they arrived at the bombsite they could see that who ever had been there the night before had left in a hurry, for the spades where cast away and they hadn't even bothered to cover up their footprints in the soil, leading away from the airfield into the countryside on the other side of the barbwire fence.

"Where do we start?" Joe asked as he picked up the spades, turning around, looking across the field with the crater in the middle of it.

"Well, we start mapping the ground. Then we start digging trenches around the crater to see if there is anything left of what they found. If not we dig trenches in the areas we've mapped to see if there are any remnants of any kind of life here. When we've done all that, then we call it a day," Hanna said unpacking her bag she'd brought with her, rejecting and muttering as she saw the things she had stuffed in it.

To Joe's despair, it took the better part of the morning to map the area around the crater and to decide where to start digging.  
"So why is a pretty girl like you, interested in the past, choosing to dig in the dirt, mud all over her, when she could be a glamorous secretary and be with me say Saturday at eight. I'll pick you up," he said with a confident, and some might say, cheeky smile.

"Aren't you confident? How can you expect me to accept when you insult my way of living?" Hanna looked up at him and saw that he was grinning at her, which annoyed her even more.

"Stop grinning! This is not a joking matter! The way I live my life is not for you to question."

"Touchy are we…. No, I am sorry for insulting you, I did not intend to. What I really was trying to say was that you puzzle me. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to spend you days in the past, observing history, when I'm in history making it."

"And I cannot see why you seem to avoid the past, if I'm reading you right. You want to make history but not study it. Has it occurred to you that you might learn a bit or to from history?" She continued scraping away the earth. "Then we might have avoided this war," she added under hear breath as she started to dig out the centre of the crater where there had been the most activity.

Joe grew bored and walked off to see if he could spot the place where the intruders had come from. There were no wheel tracks, which puzzled him. Then he saw a strange pattern in the earth and bent down to take a closer look. There were footprints, many footprints, going everywhere so there was no telling where their owners had gone. He then pressed his foot down into the ground and noticed that the same footprint was mixed with the others. Interesting, very interesting, he thought as he headed back to the crater, saving the piece of information, in the back of his mind, for later.


	2. The Crater

**Hanna Lance, Sebastian Lee, The general and Cartright are my own characters.**

**Joe Sullivan is not.**

**Hope you like it! Please Review.**

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Hanna was puzzled by the fact that the person or persons hadn't even bothered to attempt to cover up the crater. It was exactly as they had left it, which made it easier for her to see the shapes of the objects they had found. She had already copied the outlines of a bowl into her notebook and was working on some kind of sword shaped object when Joe returned to her.

"They've cleaned it out entirely!" she complained. "There isn't even a bit of rust left to me to find."

"Well they must have dropped from the sky. I can't see any other way they might have entered the area. We'd better go, I'm hungry. We may have time for a look at the crater closest to the base."

"I guess you're right. I'll just pack my stuff up and then we can go," she said and stood up, stretching. Then she saw something then made her stop and freeze. "Hang on; I think I've found something!" She bent down and carefully began to scrape of the top soil and after a few minutes she had managed to get the object free. It was a bronze hairpin with a ruby on it.

"Isn't it beautiful? This is from the early Viking age and very rare!"

"They must have been in a hurry to miss that. Although it is easy to miss, you almost did."

"Good thing I didn't. This gives us a clue to the other thing the found. "

Hanna rapped it in a plastic bag and then took out a bag of plaster and started to mix the white mass with water. She then went to something that looked like an ordinary hole to Joe and started to fill it. The "hole" turned out to be a hole made by an urn and by filling the hole with plaster Hanna got the idea of what the urn looked like. They spent at least half an hour doing this and by dinnertime, they had over twenty different kinds of urns, jugs and vases, a few swords and brooches. As they where packing up Hanna's things, stopping for the day, Hanna suddenly threw the things she was holding on the ground and threw herself down on her knees, grabbing her brush as she did so.

"Oh, I hope I didn't damage it," she mumbled as she brushed the object carefully. She had found another brooch but this one was different from the others. It was a silver disk brooch with animals engraved on the front and with an inscription around the edge on the back. Hanna could see that it was in Old English but found that she had to consult her books before she could date it and translate the inscription. She tucked it safely in a bag and put it in her inner pocked as she picked up her things and walked to the car where Joe was waiting for her.

"Find anything interesting", he asked as he started the engine and reversed the car. "Yes, very. But I don't recognize the stile," Hanna replied and showed him the silver brooch.

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Back at her room Hanna unpacked all the things she had found and placed them on the desk in the room that had been assigned to her at the base. Hanna glanced at her watch and saw that it was a few minutes past five. Folding up her sleeves she began to copy all the artefacts into her journal followed by the date and where she had found them.

Yawning as she finished her work she glanced out of the window and saw that it was getting dark. Hanna put the book and the artefacts away and massaged her arms. As she looked out of the window at the setting sun her thoughts drifted to Joe. He was breathtakingly handsome. And of that cheeky smile that made her melt inside. Hanna had never met someone like him before. She blushed as she thought of his broad shoulders and green eyes.


	3. The Note

**Hanna Lance, Sebastian Lee, The general and Cartright are my own characters.**

**Joe Sullivan is not.**

**Hope you like it! ****Please Review.**

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Maybe she should have gone with Joe but then Hanna felt that she was too tired and longed for a good night's sleep, something that was rare nowadays.

As she unpacked her suitcase, she decided to go to the canteen to have dinner.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door and then a piece of paper was slid under it."That's odd," Hanna muttered to herself, since no one knew she was here, she assumed it was Joe wanting her to come with him to the pub. However, it wasn't Joe, it was someone who claimed to know who had been digging in the craters and wanted her to meet him in the pub for more information. Hanna reread the note and then looked at her watch. Half past six. The message said "be at the pub a seven o'clock…". Hanna was curious to what she might learn if she met with the person, so she put the last shirt in its place in the draw and headed for the door, grapping her purse on the way.

Joe, who was sitting with Sebastian enjoying a drink of orange juice, saw Hanna enter the pub and walked over to her. She claimed to have an appointment and he decided to wait with her.

"No, really, you don't have to wait with me. I'll be perfectly fine on my own." Hanna said as they sat down at a table.

"Now, now, Miss Lance, what kind of man would I be if I left a lady on her own to wait for some mystery person? No, I have decided, I'm waiting with you." Joe was clearly determined; Hanna could not help smiling as she sighed inwardly. It would be nice with some company and it had been ages since she eaten out, with a war on and everything.

Joe, suddenly shy looked everywhere except at Hanna, until he suddenly realised that this could be turned into a date. He turned to her with a broad smile on his face, moving closer as he did so.

"Do you know,' he said pausing, eyes sparkling, "if you add a bottle of wine and a few candles, this could be considered as a date…."

"Wha… what are you talking about. I'm waiting for someone!"

"That might be that case," Joe smiled. "Even if I'd like to think that this just was a clever ruse to have dinner with me, I will pretend, for the moment, that I believe you."

"Well that is nice of you," Hanna said with a dry voice.

"That time was you to meet…

"At seven pm… why?"

"He or she is late." Joe said glancing at his watch.

"Well, I… I guess that there's no reason for me to stay then." Hanna stood up and began to leave when Joe caught her arm and stepped round the table so they were standing face to face.

"Hanna, may I call you Hanna? Now, let's not waste an evening. I have a proposition for you. Why don't you and I have something to eat and drink and afterwards I'll drive you back to the base. How does that sound?"

Hanna looked into Joe's eyes and saw that there was something she never seen before, and never in the men she'd dated. There was something that told her that she should stay.

"Thank you, Joe. I'd love to."

Hanna had never enjoyed someone's company as much as she enjoyed Joe's.

…

They were cruising along the empty road, Hanna telling Joe her plans for the next day, when Joe saw a car closing in fast in his rear view mirror.

The car accelerated and knocked into the several times, Joe barely managing to keep control over the car, when they where forced off the road. Hanna climbed out of the car and stumbled around the car to see if Joe was all right. He was not. She touched his shoulder lightly and he jerked his head back. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead but was apart from that fine. She helped him out and to sit at the side of the road.

"What just happened?" he asked as he touched his forehead. It hurt badly.

"I'm not really sure. For some reason we were pushed off the road…" Hanna was puzzled. She had been on the base less than 24 hours and already had she found artefacts indication a Viking treasure, been contacted by someone who claimed to know the persons behind the bombings and now been close to death.

"Come on, we will have to walk back, it's not far." Joe stood up and swayed a little. Hanna sighed, fetched her bag from the passenger seat and placed herself at his side.

"You're in no shape to walk, but if that is what we must do, then lean on me."

*

Back at the base they reported the incident and the location of the wreckage.

"My rooms just around the corner from her," Hanna said. "You can clean that cut of yours…"

Walking down the corridor to her room they heard a laud noise coming from the direction of her room. Joe let go of Hanna and leaned against the wall as she ran the last few steps to her door and unlocked it. Throwing the door open she found the room in total chaos. The draws in the desk were pulled out and where lying on the floor, papers everywhere, her cloths were in a mess in the chest of draws.

As Joe entered the room Hanna was looking trough the papers that were left and at the same time tidying the room. He walked over to the bed and sat down, waiting for Hanna to say something. It was clear that she was in chock yet she seemed strangely calm.

When she finally spoke it was in a whisper:

"They have taken it. They knew where to look and – and," her voice faltered and Joe moved to sit by her side on the floor.

"What exactly have they taken?"

"My notes on the finds, everything else is here. My books and the other work I brought with me are still here."


	4. Further Excavations

**Hanna Lance, Sebastian Lee, The general, Cartright and Keiran O'Reilly are my own characters.**

**Joe Sullivan is not.**

**Hope you like it! **

**Please, please. please review.**

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"He's on his way," Hanna said as she hung up the phone and stood up to leave the office.

"Who's on his way?" Joe asked curiously, opening the door for her.

"My assistant Kieran O'Reilly with some research material and some more tools. He will be here tomorrow, so can you inform Group Captain Fowler and arrange a car to pick him up, please?

"On it." Joe said lingering at the door to the office, fiddling with the handle. "What are we doing today? More digging?"

"Yes, why? Need to be someplace else today?" Hanna turned to face him and smiled. "Shovelling dirt not your cup of tea?"

"Not really, no." Joe was relieved that he didn't have to lie to her to get out of digging.

"See you at lunch," he said as he strode out towards the airfield. He headed to the supply room. The supplies were kept in a large room, as big as a football pitch. It was packed full with rows of shelves packed with uniforms, tools, ….. etc.

Joe looked for the aisle where the boots where stored and found it within minutes, that particular shelf was at the back of the room. When he got to the kind of boot he was looking for he stopped dead in his tracks.

There were hundreds of boxes, no thousands! Joe sighed and wandered along the aisle trying to spot something out of place. On his second round, he noticed that one box's lid was ajar and that one of the boots inside had a faint smudge on the tip of the toe.

He picked it up and examined it more closely. Whoever had worn these boots had been in a hurry when cleaning them, there was still earth on the soles.

"Huh!" he said as he noticed that the boots were the same size as his own, a large 13. Now that was strange, he was one of only a few who had that size in shoes on the base, and that was helpful. If he could find the other size 13's then he might find who had been digging in the crater.

As he was leaving he bumped into the Supply Officer who was sorting the shelf stocked with shirts.

"Hey, Joe! What have you been up to?" He straitened and came to stand in front of Joe.

"Eh, well, you know Dave, hiding from Fowler. He wants me to write a report on the car accident, and I rather not, since I was out most of the time…. "Joe smiled impishly.

Dave sighed and shook his head. Joe would always be Joe. He bent to pick up a load of shirts to put on the shelf and Joe made his escape before Dave remembered to ask him what he'd been up to, entering the supply room without permission. Joe paused at the door and turned hesitantly back do face Dave.

"Eh… Dave?" Dave looked up. "Has there been a break in recently?"

"Yes, rather strange actually. It happened a few days ago. They forced the lock on that door and made a real mess, but as far as we know, they didn't take anything."

"What, nothing's missing?" Joe's face was astonished as he watched Dave shake his head.

"Nothing. That's what's bugging me. Why break in to a supply room and not take anything?"

"Yeah, well that's a good question. I've gotta go Dave, see ya!" Joe wanted to be alone to think things through. So, there had been a break in around the same time as the bomb fell, making the crater and revealing the Viking artefacts.

*

"Care for a second date?" Joe asked Hanna with a smile on his face.

"We haven't had a first date."

"Yes, we have, we ate dinner and then we were forced off the road, remember?" Hanna and Joe were having lunch in the mess hall, Hanna getting inviting glances from the other tables. Joe was secretly proud that this goddess of a woman was sitting with him, hence the smug smile on his face. Hanna, on the other hand, was oblivious to the attention as she was picking a piece of meatloaf to pieces on her plate.

"Well, I wouldn't call that a date. So in order to have a second date you normally have a first date." She looked up through her eyelashes to see his reaction. She did not regret turning him down the first time he had asked her. She believed that he was too confident in his ability to knock a woman off her feet, a phenomenon she had observed happened often to women around Joe, and that he would have to work if he wanted her to go out with him.

"Fine. Hanna would you like to go on a first date with me?"

"Well, I don't know… What would we do? I hope you didn't count the car crash as an exiting twist that you would like to repeat. I am afraid that I will have to burst your bubble by saying that normal people usually go into shock, you smiled the whole walk home…"

"Could it have anything to do with the company I was with? And no, I would not count a car crash as part of the normal dating procedure. I was thinking more along the lines of dinner, dancing… you know, a date."

Before Hanna could reply a clerk came up to their table and saluted Joe.

Turning to Hanna, she said:

"Miss Lance, there is someone to see you. He's parked his van in the visitor's parking lot."

"You really did bring everything, didn't you?" Joe commented as Kieran O'Reilly unloaded box after box from the van, adding to himself that he wondered if there was anything left in the office.

Ignoring Joe, Hanna greeted O'Reilly with a warm smile. Too warm, Joe thought and walked around the van, memorising the tire size, markings and the registration number.

"Well, you sounded like you needed the stuff pretty quick, so I figured, why wait until tomorrow? I didn't have anything else to do… and here I am." He spread his arms wide and gave Hanna a smile that lit up his face. That boy's head over heals for Hanna, and she's completely unaware of it, Joe mused.

"Thanks, Kieran, I do really need it, but I could have waited until tomorrow. Now, where will you stay? You can't drive all the way back to London."

"Well, I was hoping I could stay with you… and help you with things here," Kieran added as he saw Hanna beginning to say that she was living at a lodging house and wasn't sure if she could ask the Group Captain and Mrs Brown if they could take on another person.

"Well, I do need help, and that makes you free to do something more important than follow me around, Squadron Leader Williams."

"I wasn't aware that I was following you around," Joe muttered to himself under his breath.

"No, no, I like the digging, and besides I really feel that I'm getting the hang of this archaeology business. I can help you, easily enough. History is beginning to grow on me." Joe said in earnest and stepped in front of Kieran, blocking him from Hanna.

"But I want to help. I can do all the research while you dig, Hanna." Kieran took a step around Joe and knew he had won Hanna over.

"Well, I do hate doing research…" Hanna started to say when the Group Captain strode towards them, a huge smile on his face.

"Kieran! How are you? Why didn't you tell me that you were coming?"

"Well, George, I didn't want to interrupt your work. There is a war on and everything. Oh, yeah, I mean _Group Captain Fowler_. "

"No, no, don't say that, you're not disturbing anything. You will have to stay the night at least; it was a while since I saw a familiar face. I'm sure we can arrange somewhere for you to stay."

Drat, Joe thought. The kid's staying.

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**Well, what did you think? You've read it now, and I hope you enjoyed it but it would be great if you let me know if you did or not.**

**So please review**


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